mahiwaga

I'm not really all that mysterious

tags: Adolf Hitler

It's interesting how Donald Trump calls for the registering and/or deportation of Muslims and Mexicans, the torture and killing of civilians whose family members are suspected of terrorism, more violence against protestors at his rallies and refuses to disavow white supremacist groups supporting him and people are quick to be apologists and say "He's not Hitler!" while Bernie Sanders calls for universal health care, free higher education, and increased regulation of the financial sector and people seem to immediately jump to "He's just like Stalin!"

I think the fact that Trump will be a despot if elected and already has an obviously despotic personality is readily apparent to (1) anyone who grew up in a developing country (2) anyone whose parents are from a developing country and quite possibly fled to the U.S. because of despotism (3) anyone who actually paid attention in high school history class.

Godwin's Law becomes extremely unhelpful when discussing actual fascism and despotism. The Nazis may have committed some of the greatest atrocities known to humanity (although the Communists under Stalin and under Mao killed more people) but Hitler is not some incredibly inhuman evil monster that we'll never see again. He may have been evil and monstrous, but his motivations were akin to the motivations of other politicians.

The typical instinct on the Internet is to recoil at any comparison of a contemporary politician to Hitler (thanks, Godwin!) but sometimes you really can't avoid it when someone decides to run on an ultranationalist authoritarian platform.